Leadership Development Program

Effective leaders need a toolkit of skills, and collaboration has become a key component. To provide an opportunity for
ASIS&T members to develop their collaboration skills, the ASIS&T Leadership Committee is pleased to offer Diane H. Sonnenwald’s Collaboration in Action workshop as part of the
ASIS&T Leadership Development Program at the Annual Meeting.

Collaboration is often needed to solve complex problems that require expertise from multiple disciplines (or domains) and organizations. In addition, collaboration can help promote various economic, educational, research, political, and social agendas such as sustainable development, economic growth, and increased cultural understanding. However, collaborating with others who may have different ways of working and communicating can be challenging.

The 90-minute workshop consists of a small-group hands-on exercise, in which participants will practice collaboration skills and strategies, and a group discussion about collaboration and take-away lessons from the exercise. Three main collaboration challenges attendees will experience and learn about are:

Consequences from sharing and withholding different types of information

Authority and equity in participation, especially with respect to domain-related tools

InstructorDiane H. Sonnenwald is currently President of ASIS&T and the Head of School and Professor of Information and Library Studies as well as the Head of Subject in Library and Information Studies at the School of Library and Information Studies at University College Dublin (UCD). She is also an adjunct professor in Computer Science at the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

Diane conducts research on collaboration and collaboration technology in a variety of contexts, including inter-disciplinary and inter-organizational collaboration in police work, emergency healthcare, academia, and industry. In addition, she has been awarded over 20 research grants from U.S. and international foundations, corporations, and funding agencies, including the National Science Foundation, National Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine, the European Science Foundation, and most recently the Motorola Foundation.
In 2002 Diane was a Fulbright Professor in Finland. Other awards and recognition include a U.S. Army Research Laboratory Scientific Contribution Award, UNC Junior Faculty Research Award, ALISE Research Methodology Best Paper Award, and Bell Communications Research Award of Excellence.